Thinking ‘Limits’ and its ‘Translations’ with Michel Serres – A Critical Perspective on Limitarisms in Political Ecology

• In Event: A Good Life, In Theory: Thinking and Living with Climate Change - I

Abstract

The conceptualization of ‘limits’ have been decisive for the research around climate change, the distribution and exploitation of resources and apocalyptic end-of-world-scenarios, especially since the 1970s onwards. The ‘limits of growth’, as promoted by the Club of Rome, or more recently ‘planetary boundaries’ have had crucial impact on political rhetorics in regard to human’s relationship with the environment. This paper attempts to critically engage with the notions of the ‘limit’ and its potential to successfully translate for world-narratives in the realm of political ecology. For this, I will draw attention to the work of Michel Serres and the way he conceives ‘limits’ and ‘boundaries’ in its conceptual differences, as well as in its role to ‘translate’ between the history and philosophy of science, mathematics, aesthetics, and politics. To exemplify Serres’ methodological approach to a structural analysis of limits, I will take passages Hermes, Geometry, Rome, The Birth of Physics, Atlas and Hominescence into account. Serres’s insightful contribution to think ‘limits’ and ‘boundaries’ in a necessarily transdisciplinary way resonates with contemporary critical voices in the ‘limits’-discourse in political ecology (Bühlmann/Hovestadt/Michael; Kallis; Garforth; Demos et al), in regard to which this paper tries to stress the critical contribution Serres gains especially from historical and philosophical examination.

Author

• Lilian Kroth, The University of Cambridge